Flames continue mastery of Wild

Related

At the morning media briefing, Jacques Lemaire, at his taciturn yet engaging best, blinked, hard, when asked if he felt obliged to remind his Minnesota Wild of the gravity of the occasion.

“Do you think I have to tell them?’’

After a flurry of hasty “no, no, of course not”s and much feet-shuffling, Lemaire’s face crinkled into a got-ya! grin.

“But I still do.’’

With 14 of their next 17 games on the road, the Wildmen find themselves three points out of the Top 8 cutoff in the Western Conference.

The hosts didn’t get it. The Calgary Flames continue their mastery with a 3-2 overtime win.

Typical Wild, though. Tighter than Kirstie Alley’s stretch slacks.

But the winning strike came 3:50 into OT, Adrian Aucoin throwing a shot at the net that hit something, someone – Cammalleri was crashing the net -- and popped up and over Nicklas Backstrom.

The end result was only justice. In the third, Calgary came close. Matthew Lombardi hit iron. Then Cammalleri skittered a backhander past the post.

Then, in OT, as Mikko Koivu stumbled and fell, Aucoin – of all people – sped away on a breakaway, picked his spot, beat Nicklas Backstrom with his shot – and heard the sickening CLANK! of puck hitting post.

The Flames came into the game determined to lighten Miikka Kiprsuoff’s heavy workload, and limited the singles-hitting Wild to 25 shots.

The came at a potentially stiff price, as 21-goal gunner Rene Bourque left the game in the second period after getting tangled up with centreman Dan Fritsche, who tipped over on top of the vulnerable Flame. Bourque did not return.

As poor as the Minnesotans played for much of the first frame, the Flames matched them mistake-for-mistake, listless shift-for-listless shift through the second. The only redeeming feature from a Calgary perspective was a game-tying strike by Dustin Boyd at 16:10. After winning an offensive faceoff, Boyd was in ideal position to lift the rebound of a Cory Sarich shot over a prone Backstrom.

Other than that, odious.

Rather than build on a first-period lead on the road, the Flames couldn’t manage a shot for nearly 14 minutes. Their effort was summed up by a needless roughing penalty to Todd Bertuzzi, trying to wedge the point of his elbow into the pesky Cal Clutterbuck’s right ear.

The Wild drew even on a shorthanded dash by Fritsche early on. Fritsche sped around Dion Phaneuf and then caught Kiprusoff sliding right to left to slide the puck in by the trailing pad. Earlier, Jarome Iginla, the vaunted Wild slayer, had rung a shot off the crossbar on the delayed minor to D-man James Shepard for a scary from-behind hit on Michael Cammalleri.

So instead of 2-0 to the Flames, the scoreline read 1-1.

Minnesota began pouring on the pressure, and it paid off in a Colton Gillies marker. Flames’ defenceman Adrian Aucoin messed up on this one, his ill-advised pass through the middle of the ice inside his own zone hitting Gillies. A bit of skipping later, the puck wound up back with Gillies and he buried a shot short side on Kiprusoff.

The Wildebeasts started the evening off atrociously. Barely six minutes in, the Xcel Energy crowd, perhaps still buzzed from the Motley Crue concert Wednesday night , began to voice their dissatisfaction. In more of a plea than a rallying cry, one wiseacre cut through the silence by mocking/mimicking the signature “Let’s play hockey!’’ shout that some local celebrity intones from a high perch to get each game underway.

The Flames, meanwhile, had already secured the lead they so coveted, at 3:17 on the game’s first shot. Rene Bourque – manning the left flank on the top line alongside Iginla and Craig Conroy - got lucky, his fanned pass attempt in front inadvertently swatted back to him by a backchecking Andrew Brunette. Given a second chance, Bourque popped a shot up and beyond Backstrom, for his 21st goal of the season.

That just happens to be as many as Iginla, and who would’ve bet a brass farthing on those two being tied in snipes this late into the season?

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.